


Solopsism of You

by teddy_stonehill



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Existential Crisis, F/F, Overly Poetic Love Letters, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-09 23:09:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17414303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teddy_stonehill/pseuds/teddy_stonehill
Summary: The following are excerpts from unsent messages by Demani Dusk to Gray Gloaming exploring existential questions of what it means to be, and what it means to be in love.





	Solopsism of You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sapphfoes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphfoes/gifts).



The following are excerpts from unsent messages by Demani Dusk to Gray Gloaming. Both agents of the Rapid Evening and later founders of The Brink space station in the Quire System, Demani and Gray’s romance is one that touched the lives of many throughout the long time they spent together. As historical figures, their correspondence is well-documented, but these particular messages, discovered among old draft files upon Demani’s death, have never before been published. It’s unclear why Demani chose not to send these messages, or why she never fully deleted them, but they provide a rare glimpse into the mind of one of the Rapid Evening’s most famous deserters, free even from the view of her closest love. And yet, the contents of these messages are full of that very love. They paint the portrait of a woman struggling with deep, existential questions raised by her position in life. They paint the portrait of a woman coming to terms with a new crush, and settling into her love.

By all accounts, Demani Dusk was a singular woman, and yet, don’t we all struggle with these same questions? What does it mean to be? And what does it mean to be in love?

For now, I’ll stand aside and let Demani’s words speak for her, far more eloquently than I could ever hope to.

—January’s Hymn, historian and author of _Love and Other Guaranteed Events: A Historical Account of Love and Relationships in the Age of Crystal Palace_

#

What is reality?  
  
It's a complicated question.  
  
The predictions of Crystal Palace are real in the sense that they're true. By their very nature, they're indisputable. They're more solid, more undeniable even, than a cement brick.  
  
On the other hand, the predictions of Crystal Palace turn reality into a sort of stage production. A new performance of a famous tragedy. We know the ending. We know that there can _only ever be_ one ending. And yet here we sit in the dark, watching events unfold to their inevitable conclusion. Just another story. When it ends, we'll shuffle out of the theater until it's time for the next play.  
  
And yet... as a member of the audience, as an observer, no matter how emotionally moved you are by the action in the play, there's nothing you can do to change events. The actors in the play, the characters in the fiction, even if the outcome is predetermined, even if there's no hope of a happy ending, _they can act_ . They can struggle. They can fight against their fate. In that way, are they not more real than the impotent audience?  
  
I don't know, Satellite. I just don't know.  
  
Sometimes I don't feel like the things happening in the Twilight Mirage — the events that I'm watching unfold to their inevitable conclusion — are real. Sometimes I feel like I'm not real. 

In the void of the Mirage, and the loneliness of my observation, I have only one anchor.  
  
Your voice.  
  
I know your voice is real. Not based on any existential logic or well-reasoned philosophy. I know it deep in my bones, in a place before reason, beyond knowing. When, in my lonely vigil, I feel the stars begin to spin and the planets slip from their orbits, I receive a message from you:  
  
“There's a larger story,” you say. “We're all connected to things we don't know, that we could never know.”  
  
And as I listen, the spinning stops. The planets right themselves. I know where I am. And I know where you are. You are here, with me, beside me, despite the distance between us.  
  
Are you familiar with the term solipsism? There are multiple forms of solipsism and it gets more and more complicated the further you discuss it, but the heart of solipsism is this—that one cannot prove, cannot know, that anything outside of one's own mind truly exists.  
  
Some people have been known to take this to its farthest conclusion. Such solipsists become certain that they are the only real thing in the universe, that all other people and objects are merely an extension of their own mind.  
  
Solipsism is inherently a self-focused philosophy and yet... I wonder if anyone else before me has ever felt like a solipsist at a distance? A solipsist for someone else?  
  
Sometimes I'm certain that you are the only real thing in the universe.

#

Satellite? Gray? I still love your voice. I want you to know that. Towards the beginning of our detachment here I became... detached. And you were my anchor. I've found my footing now, become more certain in myself, but you're still my anchor.  
  
I remember when we first met. When we weren't supposed to. Illicitly. It was our first step towards breaking the rules, shattering them altogether.  
  
I remember when I first saw you. You appeared before me, with your brown-bronze upper body, sprinkled with golden dust like the sky is sprinkled with stars, and you seemed to me like a monument—like a massive colossus marking the passage of some great, lost civilization, of the very concept of civilization itself.  
  
I knew, of course I knew, that you had given up your human body in order become a Satellite observer. That's the job you signed up for. And I knew it was you, in that synthetic shell. And I knew, of course I knew, that synthetic life is just as real as organic life. Even synthetic life that had once been organic life. There was no difference that mattered, not between us.  
  
And still. Faced with the monumental reality of your presence, I felt further away from you than I ever had.  
  
But then you spoke.  
  
And I heard your voice.  
  
And you were there, with me, beside me. The distance between us was the same as it had ever been. Which is to say, it was nothing. Inconsequential. We were as close as two beings ever could be.  
  
And still I wanted to be closer.  
  
I think I've grown selfish, Satellite. Although that shouldn't be news to you. I think of our future plans and the stars spin and the planets fall out of place—but in a good way.  
  
I long to see you again, but hearing your voice is enough to know you are close.

#  
  
Gray. Since truly abandoning the Rapid Evening, my sense of reality has shifted, expanded.  
  
It's ironic, because we've given up the absolute certainty that we had. The absolute reality of the Crystal Palace is no longer accessible to us, and yet because of it, my life feels more real.  
  
Maybe it's because I've stepped out of the audience and onto the stage. I'm no longer an observer, but a character in the play. Maybe the members of the audience know my inevitable end, but I don't. I can act, to try to fight my fate. Even if it makes no difference in the end, I can act.  
  
Maybe it's because you're beside me now, every day. I no longer have to reach for your presence, desperately grasping at every message you send me, scrabbling for purchase on your fleeting words.  
  
I get to hear your voice every day now.  
  
And not just your voice. Morning's Observation calling out completed orders in the diner. Grand Magnificent making some wry observation on his latest smuggling job. I'm surrounded by voices —a chorus that coalesces into the voice of The Brink itself.  
  
And yet sometimes, especially late at night, when we're alone, I'm still convinced that you're the only real thing. That everything else is somehow a creation of your mind. That everything that exists, exists because of you, with you, for you.  
  
Regardless of literal reality, I wouldn't have any of this without of you. I couldn't have any of this without you. I wouldn't want any of this without you.  
  
Thank you, Gray. Thank you for this new reality you've given me. Thank you for your voice in the darkness. Thank you. I love you. I love you.


End file.
